But who can decide what they dream?
by redheadleela
Summary: Nick Stokes! this is the second time today you've had me pinned to the floor' Just a little SaraNick friendship piece


But who can decide what they dream?

I walked into the breakroom and had to stifle a giggle as I saw Nick lying flat out on the sofa, snoring. It had been a very long shift, and I knew Nick had pulled a double. I was about to leave the room, to warn the others to leave him be (especially Greg), when I heard him groan.

"Nick?" I turned to him, but he wasn't awake. I'm paid to observe people so when I looked closely I noticed his face was wet. 'Is he ill? Nah, I would have noticed. Hang on, his forehead isn't wet, just his cheeks. He's crying!'

"Nick?" I froze again. He was struggling as if he wanted to move but someone was holding him back. He stretched his hand out as if he was stretching out for something just out of reach.

"No." His voice was small and scared. "Please, don't, no!" Each word was quiet but held so much feeling behind it that I felt like I had trodden on sacred ground. I decided I had better leave when I saw him make one last desperate attempt to get whatever he was searching for and went flying towards the coffee table.

"Nick!" I dived to catch him, which wasn't as smart as I originally thought as I ended up pinned underneath a now very awake Nick.

"Oh my God! Sara I'm so sorry! Are you alright?"

"Erm, I will be when I can breathe again." I smiled at him.

"Oh right." He helped me up and I grinned at him again. An awkward silence followed as neither of us were quite sure what had just happened.

"Nick? What were you just dreaming about?"

"Nothing." He started to blush, 'Maybe I shouldn't have brought this up.'

"It didn't look like nothing."

"How long were you planning to watch me sleep?" Nick was now red in the face for a different reason.

"Hey! If I hadn't been here, you would have smacked your brains out on the coffee table!"

I took a deep breath, I didn't want to be fighting with Nick, I wanted to help him.

We made eye contact and he flashed an embarrassed smile at me. Then he did something I would have never expected, "Do fancy going and getting breakfast?"

I stood in shock, I had assumed he wanted me to leave the subject alone, and that's why he had gotten mad at me, but maybe he just needs someone to talk to.

He stood looking at his shoes, 'He thinks I'm thinking up an excuse!'

"Yeah! Sounds great!"

It was weird sitting in our usual booth at the diner and it feeling so strange. It wasn't strange because anything was different, it was the same staff and the same food, but usually I'm so relaxed sitting there after a shift but now I felt uncomfortable and nervous.

"Hey! I got us both some pancakes." We both sat and ate for a while in an almost comfortable silence. I kept glancing up at Nick wondering what I had witnessed; he had always seemed like out of all of the gang to be the happiest and most settled.

"Sara, can you stop staring at me, it's kinda freaking me out?"

"I'm sorry. I was thinking, Nick…?"

"Sara, it's okay. What you saw… well, it was me having a nightmare, but it's been happening a lot more lately. And I don't want it to."

I looked at my friend, my best friend and saw his embarrassment and his pain, raw awful pain. I took back what I had said to Grissom so long ago, I'm glad I can feel things otherwise I wouldn't be able to help Nick.

"Hey, it's ok. I'm here. Tell me about the dream, that might help." I offered him a smile, he just looked so fragile.

"Well, it's a dream that's happened a lot since my brother died last year. He's in the dream. But he's not like he was when he died…" Nick went silent and seemed to stare off into the middle-distance and look lost.

"Er…Nick?"

"Oh. Sorry, he wasn't an adult in my dream he looked young again, like a child maybe eight or nine. What do you think that means?"

"I dunno, keep going."

"I'm standing in the middle of lots of trees, and there's a path and my brother is right at the other end of it and he's walking away from me." Tears starting escaping from Nick's eyes but he didn't seem to notice, "And he's walking away from me not really fast but just walking and I call out to him and try to run after him, but the more I try the further away he gets until I can't see him anymore."

I sat and pondered on what Nick had shared with me. It was very personal and I could sense how raw this experience had made him feel. He looked so vulnerable and fragile. "Sara, you probably think I'm stupid. A grown man being upset by a stupid dream."

"I don't think you're stupid, I was remembering when I had a similar dream." I stopped to watch the shock spread across Nick's face, "I think I was about 13, and my Auntie had just died, I was very close to her so it hit me hard. I had similar dreams to yours but mine was like a busy street and there were too many people so I couldn't get to her and she couldn't hear me shouting."

"Wow! I never thought that anyone else might've had this sort of dream. What did you do to make it go away?"

"Well I did on it's own after a while." Nick's face fell so I added, "but something that I tried to use to stop the dreams was right before I went to sleep I would picture a really happy memory of my Auntie. It didn't always work, and I sometimes still have the dream now if something specific reminds me of her, but it does work quite well."

We both stood up to leave the diner and Nick came across, gave me a bear hug, and whispered in my ear, "Thank you." Unfortunately, I hadn't been expecting the hug so it knocked me off balance and we tumbled to the floor.

"Nick Stokes! This is the second time today you've had me pinned to the floor!"

His grin said it all!


End file.
